Gretchen Whitmer responds to calls by some Democrats to vote āuncommittedā in Michiganās primary on Tuesday
Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, pushed back on calls to not vote for Joe Biden over his handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict, saying on Sunday that could help Trump get re-elected.
āItās important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote thatās not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,ā she said on Sunday during an interview on CNNās State of the Union. āA second Trump term would be devastating. Not just on fundamental rights, not just on our democracy here at home, but also when it comes to foreign policy. This was a man who promoted a Muslim ban.ā
Whitmer, who is a co-chair of Bidenās 2024 campaign, also said she wasnāt sure what to expect when it came to the protest vote.
Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, urged Democrats last week to vote āuncommittedā in Michiganās 27 February primary.
Thatās not the subject though. This is about a messaging vote in the primary.
Call me crazy, but fomenting dissent and convincing your base to do anything other than get behind your incumbent candidate is not how you win elections.
This short term protest vote effort in the primary, meaningless on the surface, could have repercussions in the long term by convincing people to not actually turn out on election day if nothing changes.
You are crazy.
Obamaās primary against Hillary and Biden was brutal, including dog whistles from both the Clinton and Biden campaigns. Obama won. Hillaryās primary against Sanders was absolutely tame by comparison, and she lost. Trumpās primary was an absolute shit show of Republican fuckery and general nastiness, and he won. The 2020 Democratic primary was highly contended with Biden barely showing in the first several states, and he won. Trump was handed the encombant nomination with no real dissent and he lost. Are you seeing a pattern?
What you are talking about was reasonably correct in the 90s when corporate media dominated and independent media was in itās infancy. Itās not applicable today.
The only incumbent you mentioned in your examples is Trump in 2020, and his defeat there had less to do with him not having serious primary challengers and more to do with the fact that he was coming off of arguably the worst presidential term in US history.
The rest of your examples (Obama, Hillary, Biden, etc.) are non-incumbents, and primaries in those cases are extremely helpful to gauge who the best candidate really is among a field of many qualified ones. That doesnāt guarantee victory, especially if the establishment just hands the nom over to whoever they feel like, such as in the case of Clinton 2016, but itās not outrageous to think that if youāre party is going to front the same guy as last time and there are no legitimately serious challengers, why bother encouraging people to say the incumbent is bad?
This election is quite unique, as it is literally a do-over of 4 years ago. Both parties could claim that they are running as incumbents. I donāt really see how the Republican establishment expect Trump to succeed this year where he failed in 2020 all the while saddled with even more baggage considering Jan 6th and his many, many criminal indictments.
Itās always entertaining when someone who provided no support for their position criticizes the references of the opposing position.
The reason for encouraging people to say the incumbent is bad is to encourage the entombment to be something other than bad, or to encourage the party to replace them. This is a one of the rare situations where voters might actually have the leverage to change US policy on a critically important issue. This push is being spearheaded by Palestinian Americans with loved ones back in Palestine. How will you convince them to vote for Biden in the primary, or even the general?
I personally think that Trump has no path to winning the presidency, and might even be replaced by the RNC if he picks up some convictions. My concern is that I think Trump might be the only Republican that Biden can beat.
Iām only criticizing your references because you apparently skipped over the entire first part of my comment that specifically mentioned incumbent candidates and began listing off examples of non-incumbents who do well or poorly based on how contested their primaries are. Thatās not what weāre discussing here.
Realistically, nothing I say will convince them to do anything other than what they feel is right, and thatās fine, but if I had to pick one thing to say, it would be:
āIf you think things are bad now, they could be so, so much worse.ā
I think people are losing the forest for the trees with this election.
Letās be clear. There are people for whom beating Trump is not a particularly high priority, and most of them are in positions of power within the DNC. They have demonstrated it over and over, but there is one example that stands far above the rest, and that was moving the North Carolina primary to the front of the schedule.
Biden will not take NC in the general, whereas New Hampshire is very much a swing state. The DNC probably threw a state away just to make sure that the American people would not get the chance to consider a better Democratic candidate.
As long as the DNC continues to demonstrate that they would prefer Trump to a progressive candidate, progressives are going to resent supporting Democrats. If you want to get off this treadmill of existential dread, figure out how to wrench the party out of their hands. Everything else is just wasted effort because Trump, or the next Trump will win eventually.